What's All The Fuss About?!

HERE I WAS, EAGERLY ANTICIPATING A WILD AND CRAZY ride, looking forward to reading every salacious detail of 22-year old Barack Obama's romantic dalliance with his Aussie girlfriend from her journal's "juicy" (?) recollections in Vanity Fair as the goofy Tamron Hall intimated she couldn't talk about some of the "sexual" content in girlfriend's hot journal entries. (Incidentally, I think I figured out what accounts for Tamron's terrific curves: It's her daily Burger diet.)

So, based on Tamron's tittilated reaction (she's not the only one; the women went a little nuts with, let's face it, their romance novel syndrome) I began scanning the article for accounts of wild parties at Studio 54, round-the-clock sex explicitly detailed, drugs, and rock 'n roll ... Instead, what do I find?

A young Barack spending nights at the University library, open 24 hours, where it's warm; hooking up with an Aussie chick, diplomat's daughter, getting laid but not as a one night stand (what a romantic prude, Barack!); discussing postmodern literature and quoting T.S. Eliot; on Sundays lounging around barechested doing the New York Times crossword puzzle while wearing a blue and white sarong (pitter-patter goes Tamron's heart — FYI provincial Beltway denizens, Texans etc., back in the day reading the Sunday Times was a program, along with brunch; how very bourgeois of His Barackness); writing long, poetic, political, beautifully literate letters (I've written epistolaries in my day, how 'bout you?); going on theater dates, to museums (who can resist the Met?), Italian restaurants of the type still extant in Little Italy; racing girlfriend in the park, letting her win (how romantically gallant ... 'pass the barf bag'); being cool, aloof, guarded, veiled (OH MY), so girlfriend says (a test) "I love you" and Barack replies politely, "thank you."

Tamron and her girlfriends are mystified and incensed: Why didn't he say, "I love you too"? But guys totally get it; she's making her commitment move, so pull back and don't up the emotional ante, best to let her down easy, politely but noncommitally; inevitably living together brings tension, Barack has flare-up over doing the dishes (how quotidian!); they push each other away. One of ten million stories in the big city. Next chapter ... Any questions?

Hmm ... Twenty-something President Obama was an incurable romantic, an introspective intellectual, who wrote beautifully. Fits right into the mainstream lives of great American presidents, like Jefferson and Lincoln. Who'd a thunk it?

P.P.S. Of Heroes And Villains

 NORM ORNSTEIN AND THOMAS MANN explain why it is necessary for we, the voters, to fumigate the Republican Party as we would a cockroach infestation. Meanwhile, Villain Ratigan can't seem to fit them into his schedule — OOPS, not after Villain threw a hissy fit at a former Medicare administrator who found fraud in the system but failed to blame President Obama; instead, he credited oversight provisions in the President's Affordable Care Act for unearthing the fraud, and added it will be a "tragedy" if the Supreme Court overturns it.

Paul Krugman who Lawrence accurately noted "is right about everything," won't be on Villain's show either; Villain hates him almost as much as he hates the President, because Krugman makes Villain look like a bigger fool than usual ... without breaking a sweat. But the stealth Republicans, Americans Elect, are Villain's kind of political support group ... "so gobsmackingly wrongheaded. To be fair, Americans Elect only has a few things wrong with it: They can't win, they can't govern, and the way they're going about their business is making our problems worse." Peas in a pod: Villain likes them.

 

P.S. Our Favorite Hollywood Socialist Mocks Ayn Rand Disciple Paul Ryan

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE, Paulie. Dear objectivists, watch as Lawrence deconstructs your cult Goddess, Ayn Rand and fawning  disciple, apple-of-the-Beltway's-eye, Paulie the Munster, who ran for the hills pretending to be a Jesus Freak and pious God-fearing Catholic. Jeez ... Can Paulie the toast of D.C. get more fifth-rate than that?!

 

HAIL TO THE CHIEF! President Obama Spikes The Ball In The Endzone

IN A BRILLIANT political maneuver President Obama outflanked his political opposition, consigning the hammerlock Republicans have held over the Democratic Party's head, false though it has always been, of "weakness" on national security to the dustbin of political history. Shorn of Republican spin, History shows Democrats have been plenty tough enough prosecuting our post-LBJ wars/military interventions, the wise grown-ups who internalized the lessons of Vietnam, whose trauma happened on the Party's watch with tragic consequences at home and abroad.

The more Republicans protested with faux outrage the "politicization" of the killing of Osama bin Laden the more Americans were reminded of it, and the more the President's stock rose. It was almost palpable. Oingo-boingo Mitts-flops reversed himself so often it was hard keeping up with the latest pirouette. Some years ago in response to then-Senator Obama's promise to hunt down and kill bin Laden given actionable intelligence, no matter where he may be, Romney harrumphed that it wasn't worth "moving heaven and earth" to find one individual, cautioning that we musn't offend Pakistan by "bombing our ally" without their permission. "Bomb-bomb-bomb bombbomb McCain" must still wake up in a cold sweat over this one.

Then, during the insanity reality show known as the GOP presidential debates, Romney joined the chorus for war with Iran (and the Soviet Union, too, to protect Czechoslovakia, I guess) over their nuclear program — no diplomacy there; straight to war — but couldn't decide whether he was for troop withdrawals and an end to our wars in the region with a Bushwhack punt about listening "to our commanders on the ground." Wrong answer. When you're the Commander-in-Chief, they listen to you. He also refused to commit to any troop withdrawal timetable.

What now Mittens? With the President's speech explaining to Americans that a "responsible" drawdown of our troops and ending the war in Afghanistan requires that we maintain a military presence there until 2024, is Mittens going to try to outflank the President on the right: "I'll take your 12 and raise you 28 for an even half-century presence in theater"? Good luck selling that to the American people. Or will he horrify the neocons by flippin' the dove and announcing we should be out sooner? Team Obama will love pointing out Romney's naïve "cut-and-run" military posture. Can you say "check" ... mate? Or try intoning "I'm so disappointed" like a wild and crazy guy ... ha-ha-ha. Sob.

More than two decades before President Obama's historic post-Cold War reset of American foreign policy, the neocon Republican fantasy that American military virility should remake the world in our own image, whatever that meant, had won the day. And also ensuing decades, with tragic consequences. The neocon Statement of Principles eerily parallels the traditional fascist ideal of a superior race with a mythologized past. Its neocon American version resurrects the 19th century concept of American expansionism known as "Manifest Destiny" (2.0) in which a virtuous America is entitled to realize its destiny as a world power by force of arms if necessary: Such a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today," the "Statement of Principles" concludes, yet "is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next."

By contrast, Democratic foreign policy and our military posture was informed by the small 'd' ideal of American democracy. The same ideal which Romney sneeringly and ignorantly berates as President Obama "apologizing" to the world for America. A lie, of course, along with the myth of Democratic "weakness" on foreign policy. The U.S. Democratic foreign policy was reaffirmed and championed by President Obama on the anniversary of bin Laden's killing, with exceptional skill, real "moral clarity" and a steely focus on our national security interests: First, (a) identify and prioritize the goal —to hunt down bin Laden and exterminate Al Qaeda — then (b) set out systematically to accomplish it. It is the rational counterweight to the inherently racist Manifest Destiny (2.0) as the ideological foundation for heady neocon dreams of empire.

The Republican experience is completely different. No matter the cost, their warmongering is an end in itself rather than a somber but determined concession to the failure of diplomacy as applied in self-defense, or in concert with our allies when all other peaceful means of averting a crisis have been exhausted. To the chicken hawk neocons, most of whom have never tasted battle, their aim is to create empire by force of arms and a 21st century "Pax Americana" through Orwell's perpetual wars feeding the military-industrial complex beast that President Dwight Eisenhower warned of in his farewell speech.

Lest we too quickly dismiss as preposterous the notion of a fascist strain in American politics and foreign policy, consider this: The Nazi Germany version of Manifest Destiny was known as Lebensraum, literally "living space." It was the ideological justification for Nazi Germany's eastward expansionism, seizing lands and raw materials from "inferior" Polish, Russian, and other Slavic populations, while committing unspeakable atrocities. In Manifest Destiny, American expansionism was westward, the populations to be subjugated, enslaved, and largely exterminated, were the "inferior" Native Americans herded into concentration camps called reservations.

Relying on an updated version of Manifest Destiny as their ideological foundation, neocons view the Cold War "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" as actually representing a romantic, conservative Reagan ideal, a return to which neocons fervently crave, but which in reality has never existed. Their misguided, bellicose neo-imperialism is all the more dangerous for its ideological underpinnings and ultimately doomed to self-destruction through the inexorable, unprecedented sapping of American power, prestige, and influence abroad.

The (George W.) "Bush Doctrine" of "preemptive war" was drawn from the neocon Statement of Principles on the "need to increase defense spending significantly ... to carry out our global responsibilities today, modernize our armed forces for the future," and "accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles." Bush plucked, wholesale, a neocon pre-9/11 letter to President Clinton calling for the peemptive removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In his 2010 memoir, Bush justified his neocon "doctrine" as "taking the fight to the enemy overseas before they can attack us again here at home" and "confronting threats before they fully materialize."

Tragically, in his zeal to apply the bellicose neocon imperialist policies, Bush attacked the wrong country in Iraq, took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan, and allowed Osama bin Laden to escape the mountains of Tora Bora into Pakistan. Saddam was a bad actor but he had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Nor did he harbor designs on attacking the U.S., much less retain the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction, with highly competent UN inspectors breathing down his neck. Choosing war over sanctions to take out one lousy dictator among dozens around the world was not worth the sacrifice in blood, treasure, and heartache to the United States.

Significantly, American military interventions during the Carter and Clinton presidencies were narrowly focused with a humanitarian component; the opposite of the neocon ideological Republican wars. President Carter, subject of the Romney cheap shot — "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order" to take out Osama bin Laden — actually made that fateful and gutsy call of a failed mission to rescue the American embassy hostages held in Iran.

Unlike the Republican neocon bloodlust for deposing anti-American leaders — Manuel Noriega (Panama), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), democratically elected president Salvador Allende (Chile), failed coup attempts in Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega) and Venezuela (Hugo Chavez) — President Carter took the much more effective approach, at least in Latin America, of declaring that human rights would henceforth be a cornerstone of American foreign policy. It restrained Latin military dictators dependent on U.S. aid from their most abusive practices, and paved the way for democracy to take root and flourish in Latin America.

President Clinton's military interventions, in Somalia (unsuccessful), in Haiti (restoring deposed President Aristide to power), and the U.S.-led NATO military action in Bosnia to stop ethnic cleansing and the killing of civilians, without a single American killed in action, were each based on humanitarian grounds. Stopping the genocidal Bosnian war and bringing the criminals to justice in the International Tribunal in the Hague, reinforced that other doctrine of a "just war" consistent with our highest moral values as a civilized democracy.

Ironically, the raison d'etre for the doctrinal neocon notion of "perpetual war" — Orwell's metaphor for the Cold War — was their fantastical idealization of Ronald Reagan, credited with "winning the Cold War" as the accelerated rotting from within collapse of the Soviet Union ended on his watch as well as Pope John Paul II's. Still, Reagan deserves great credit for being a better peacetime diplomat with our biggest foes than a military commander. His military adventurism in Lebanon and Libya were small disasters, and the administration's covert CIA activities in Central America leading up to the Iran-Contra scandal nearly destroyed Reagan's presidency. It was, arguably, just as profound a constitutional crisis as Watergate — which engulfed and brought down an earlier Republican president, Nixon — and which would have directly implicated President Reagan had his subordinates not fallen on their swords.

David Frum, the earnest and rational conservative commentator, made a feeble attempt to defend knee-jerk, reactive Republican criticism. A thankless task given Romney's terminal lack of gravitas exemplified by the amazingly stupid remark that any American would have made the same call President Obama did, taking out bin Laden. Excuse me?! All I could think of were the millions of Romney's crazed constituents who, given the chance, wouldn't hesitate for a moment to exercise the nuclear option — a fearsome push-button toy to be directed at those hated "foreigners." Mitt Romney is no longer simply an amusing, out-of-touch mega-rich technocrat. He is dangerously out of touch, not just with voters, but as an automaton to implement the Ryan budget with "five working digits" to sign Grover Norquist's government-destroying bills. Most of all, Romney is an empty suit not to be trusted on any level with the presidency.

Frum made the highly questionable point that nothing has changed in Afghanistan since 2008 when President Obama took office. Nice try, David, but in a country where success is measured by two steps forward, one step back, such claims sidestep the President's main objective, which is to wind down the war responsibly and give the Afghan people a chance; the necessary breathing room for their self-government and democracy to begin taking root. The President inherited this mess from the Republicans and is determined not to abandon it to the fate Nixon's successor President Ford accepted, of helicopters evacuating people from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, 1975.

The Commander-in-Chief has earned the right and privilege to celebrate the killing of Osama bin Laden as a signal and historic achievement of his administration. President Obama has shown us he's got the moves to do his endzone dance. The return to rational, focused, tough-as-nails but non-belligerent Democratic Party foreign policy is cause for all Americans to celebrate. Of all the chatter surrounding President Obama's surprise visit to Afghanistan, Chris Matthews said it best when he was reminded of Winston Churchill in this memorable line from the President's speech:

"As we emerge from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it is time to renew America. An America where our children live free from fear, and have the skills to claim their dreams. A united America of grit and resilience, where sunlight glistens off soaring new towers in downtown Manhattan, and we build our future as one people, as one nation."

This is from Winston Churchill's speech at the Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942:

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat. Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory — a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

Winston Churchill and FDR are the 20th century's gold standards for leadership in times of war. Yesterday, the American people glimpsed the 21st century standard in President Obama, established almost one year ago outside public view in the White House Situation Room.

To Ratigan, Beltway SCOUNDRELS et al, With The Audacity To Call Themselves "Journalists"

CAN ANY OF YOU RATBASTARDS say it without gagging?! Good on Norm Ornstein for breaking loose of his pseudo-academic C-SPAN/PBS analyses of politics in America to state the unvarnished TRUTH in a simple, declarative sentence: “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

Among the worst media offenders is Dylan Ratigan, the liar and sophist infecting MSNBC's programming, who has (mis)used his big microphone to perpetuate the LIE that both political parties are equally to blame, promote the rise of the Tea Party, and set off on so-called "30 million jobs" junkets while joining Republicans to sabotage every effort by Democrats in Congress to get any kind of jobs bill (or bills, period) passed.

His cheerleading for the Teabaggers' rise to power was, outside Fox, the most irresponsible misuse of political cable programming I have ever seen. Especially considering the hypocrisy, the failure to be objective, to the point he wouldn't identify Democrats (unless when frequently bashing them) by party designation, a common practice everywhere else on the network, and populating his program with neutered "progressives" seemingly under orders not to say negative things about a "certain political party" by name.

Ratigan's loathing of President Obama drives his unbalanced assault on the Democratic Party, the only party which has tried to govern responsibly, with HUNDREDS of bills passed by Nancy Pelosi's Congress killed by obstructionist Republicans. But let Norm Ornstein, who knows more about American politics than Ratigan will ever know in ten Deepak Chopra lifetimes, school the fool on the facts of our political system today: (Not that it would make one whit of difference to a propagandist who LIES with such facility.)

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Published: April 27

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates. 

 It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. 

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach. [...]

[T]he real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist. [...] From the day he entered Congress in 1979, Gingrich had a strategy to create a Republican majority in the House: convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority. It took him 16 years, but by bringing ethics charges against Democratic leaders; provoking them into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives; exploiting scandals to create even more public disgust with politicians; and then recruiting GOP candidates around the country to run against Washington, Democrats and Congress, Gingrich accomplished his goal.[...]

Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.

On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.

Republicans often dismiss nonpartisan analyses of the nature of problems and the impact of policies when those assessments don’t fit their ideology. In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.

Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.

No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking. [...]

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

This excerpted Op-Ed is worth a complete read, particularly the more detailed history of how we came to this point. (While you're at it, Norm, next time you're on PBS with the clueless Judy Woodruff, please school her on the facts of political life.) And their advice to the media is well-taken. The best political shows on MSNBC are those least patronized by Republicans. Unlike Ratigan, Rachel Maddow is boycotted by Republicans because she compels them to answer to the FACTS and the TRUTH. Her EPIC grilling of Rand Paul was, and remains, unlike anything seen on the so-called "Progressive channel."

Ratigan's political proclivities, mindless rants, and idiotic "solutions" wouldn't be such a turn-off had he an ounce of integrity, such that rather than making sweeping accusations of "both parties" when in fact the Republicans are RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS, he didn't "distort reality" by failing to point fingers at the REAL culprits, and name names. But he won't do it because Dylan's "greedy bastards" (criminals, wingnuts, fascists, etc. etc.) are overwhelmingly on the Republican/conservative side. But that would distort his reality. And drain his guest pool.

ANOTHER WINGNUT APOLOGY?! "HOMOPHOBIC [MONICA]? MAYBE YOU'RE GAY"

DON'T TAKE IT FROM ME. That's the New York Times' informed speculation on the latest example of "wingnut humor" (extensively covered in this blog), which isn't "humor" but HATE SPEECH. For those unwilling to entertain the possibility that Fox wingnut Monica Crowley is only the latest in a long line of right wing sociopaths, in the clinical definition of the term, blissfully unaware of the distinct difference between hate speech and humor — hate speech, in this instance against gays, reinforces the hater's stereotype and encourages bullying and hate crimes — then the Times speculation seems tailor-made for Monica:

WHY are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners?

In recent years, Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader who preached that homosexuality was a sin, resigned after a scandal involving a former male prostitute; Larry Craig, a United States senator who opposed including sexual orientation in hate-crime legislation, was arrested on suspicion of lewd conduct in a men’s bathroom; and Glenn Murphy Jr., a leader of the Young Republican National Convention and an opponent of same-sex marriage, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after being accused of sexually assaulting another man.

One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a “reaction formation” — the angry battle against the outward symbol of feelings that are inwardly being stifled. Even Mr. Haggard seemed to endorse this idea when, apologizing after his scandal for his anti-gay rhetoric, he said, “I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war.”

It’s a compelling theory — and now there is scientific reason to believe it. [read on ...]

I hate to break it to our friends at the Times, and have to repeat myself, but "tell me something I didn't already know. Right?" It should also be noted that the hate speech Monica claims to be "humor" is a common characteristic of the sociopath, defined in its mildest form as an "antisocial personality, who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." In short, if the typical sociopath doesn't turn to a life of crime, he or she may end up working for Fox, The Daily Caller or Big Government. In some cases — e.g., James O'Keefe — criminal behavior and employment with right wing media are not mutually exclusive.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, however, the Times exposé of homophobic wingnut brains makes perfect sense. I'm sure Monica would rather crawl into bed with Megyn Kelly than with Roger Ailes or Bill-O The 'Falafel Face' Clown, regardless of whether this could have a negative impact on her prospects for career advancement.

Then there was the de riguer and obligatory wingnut "apology" — I couldn't have scripted it better myself. "Tweeted question" ... Really?! How about, "regret having made insensitive, homophobic statement. Sincerely apologize to Sandra and especially to the LGBT community for any pain I have caused perpetuating a hateful stereotype.":

There is something universal about good humor, which transcends culture and context, and which unites us. The so-called "humor" of wingnuts and "conservatives" is the inverse of that — hateful, nasty bigotry meant to demean people and accentuate the "other."

One dead giveaway between regular, normal folks who may have said something inappropriate, and the constant barrage of "humorous" hate language from these right wing sickos, is the tenor of the expressed apology. A normal person's apology is genuine, heartfelt and contrite. A wingnut's apology (see Limbaugh, Grenell et al) is frequently an insincere qualifier, "to those I have offended ..." As if the problem is with the people who took offense. Therein lies the mental illness. Normal people, indeed most of us, have an internal trigger that keeps us from saying and doing highly inappropriate things. It's called a conscience. 

Take it away, Monica!

Monica's BIFF weighs in from the wingnut leaders camp of the transcendentally clueless :

And to think this IDIOT could have been an octogenarian's heartbeat away from the presidency?! Seriously scary.

Sandra Fluke, the poised and impressive young woman who rocketed to stardom as a symbol of standing against everything decent Americans — men and women — view as abhorrent to our values, only grows stronger the more the wingnuts smear her. There's a favorite song of mine by the great Caetano Veloso that says: "Get up, shake off the dust, and step above it" (Levanta, sacode a poeira, e dá a volta por cima). To borrow Lawrence's signature line, Sandra gets the last word:

Backstage With Lawrence, Our Favorite Hollywood Socialist

P.S. HERE IS THE QUOTABLE SENATOR BOB KERREY, referenced in an earlier post; in case someone doesn't believe he actually said it. OOPS ... WRONG VIDEO! Definitely a big fan of the charismatic Son of Ed Rendell, Steve Kornacki — what is it about MSNBC's ever ubiquitous vanilla milquetoast Zelig? And who is THAT stealing Steve's dim bulb spotlight?!

 

Okay, now here, finally, is Lawrence interviewing Senator Bob Kerrey:

THE THINKER Smokes Out The Munster; HUFF POST Nails Him!

VERY NICE HUFF POST front page header today; their graphic is ALMOST as good and creative as ours. Here's the story — a good followup on our post (you're welcome, Howard) exposing Superdope, The Skeert Objectivist. The Rand Institute may have to coin a "third-rater" classification for Paulie, the selfishly unvirtuous coward, joining Virginia "governor vaginal probe" in the going ... going ... GOP Veepstakes ... GONE.

Bill-O The Clown Smears Andrea Mitchell On Standards of Journalism?!

THAT'S RICH. FALAFEL-FACE BILL O'REILLY, paragon of anti-journalism, taking a cheap shot at Andrea Mitchell, one of the finest TV journalists in the nation?! Bill O'Reilly, carney crier supreme, you're not in Andrea's league, so don't even try, pal.

 For the record, when I criticized "no excuses-Andrea" for not asking more "pertinent and incisive questions about the safety of Gulf seafood," I felt in this instance, on the substance, that Andrea wasn't up to her usual standards of excellence, which are head-and-shoulders above her colleagues. To use a horseracing metaphor: when the class of the field loses a race that she was supposed to win in a walk, observers will say she had "no excuses." It only happens to those whose quality and pedigree tower above the competition.

That's Andrea. Not only is she in a professional class of her own, but she's a GREAT LADY and a class act in every other respect. Good on the ever gallant Galahad Martin Bashir for standing up for his colleague, and our friend, Andrea.

The Devil Goes To Georgetown

The Devil's favorite Congressman, Paul Ryan, delivered a forgettable Georgetown speech, pregnant with hypocrisy and self-serving, insincere piety about his Catholic "faith" driven by the realization that the Republican base is composed of Religious Right Christian fanatics who do not tolerate atheists, even if they're crazy neurotics like Ayn Rand. And, by extension, her cult followers.

A few days before his speech, Ryan received a letter from 90 Georgetown professors who essentially read him the Riot Act Gospel. Here is an extended excerpt [emphasis mine, throughout]:

'We would be remiss in our duty to you and our students if we did not challenge your continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few. As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has wisely noted in several letters to Congress – “a just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.” Catholic bishops recently wrote that “the House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.”

In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.

Cuts to anti-hunger programs have devastating consequences. Last year, one in six Americans lived below the official poverty level and over 46 million Americans – almost half of them children – used food stamps for basic nutrition. We also know how cuts in Pell Grants will make it difficult for low-income students to pursue their educations at colleges across the nation, including Georgetown. At a time when charities are strained to the breaking point and local governments have a hard time paying for essential services, the federal government must not walk away from the most vulnerable.

While you often appeal to Catholic teaching on “subsidiarity” as a rationale for gutting government programs, you are profoundly misreading Church teaching. Subsidiarity is not a free pass to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices. This often misused Catholic principle cuts both ways. It calls for solutions to be enacted as close to the level of local communities as possible. But it also demands that higher levels of government provide help — “subsidium”— when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger. According to Pope Benedict XVI: "Subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa.”'

Unfortunately for the Devil and his Soul Brother Paul Ryan, Mr. Ryan cannot feverishly backpedal now, in response to prominent Catholics calling his budget immoral and antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, much less pretend Ayn Rand was nothing but a college "read" rather than his governing philosopher-queen:

'I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them," Ryan says. "They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman," a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. "But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist.'

Oh, really? Then how does Ryan explain this:

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

At the Rand celebration he spoke at in 2005, Ryan invoked the central theme of Rand's writings when he told his audience that, "Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill ... is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict — individualism versus collectivism."

The core of the Randian worldview, as absorbed by the modern GOP, is a belief that the natural market distribution of income is inherently moral, and the central struggle of politics is to free the successful from having the fruits of their superiority redistributed by looters and moochers. 

I think at this point trying to deny Ryan's attachment to Rand is pretty hard to sustain. He's not requiring his staffers to read Rand because he thinks they need a good love story. And given that it's not just a teenage fascination but the continuing embodiment of his public philosophy, it's worth noting again that Rand is a twisted, hateful thinker.

Or, as I am wont to say, a spawn of the Devil. Right? Undeterred, Ryan continues scrubbing his record furiously in the Republican mode of pretending that core beliefs are a moving target to be expunged when found out:

"I reject her philosophy," Ryan says firmly. "It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas," who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. "Don’t give me Ayn Rand," he says.

Hmm ... Will the REAL Paul Ryan please stand up. Here's his draft introduction to the Georgetown audience: "Please allow me introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste. Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my name. But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game" ... You get the picture:

'It doesn't surprise me that sales of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have surged lately with the Obama administration coming in because it's that kind of thinking, that kind of writing, that is sorely needed right now. And I think a lot of people would observe that we are right now living in an Ayn Rand novel, metaphorically speaking.' [...] 

'Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and this to me is what matters most. It is not enough to say that President Obama's taxes are too big or the health care plan doesn't work for this or that policy reason. It is the morality of what is occurring right now and how it offends the morality of individuals working toward their own free will to produce, to achieve, to succeed, that is under attack. And it is that what I think Ayn Rand would be commenting on, which we need that kind of comment more than ever.'

It seems Paulie is having an EXISTENTIAL conflict of a lesser degree — compared to the millions of suffering Americans he has targeted to victimize and savage, whose existential conflicts are matters of health, hunger, crisis poverty ... in short, life and death. Remember when I wrote of the nasty shit that passes for wingnut humor? A treat for you: Here's an example of what Objectivists might find "humorous," courtesy of one of Rachel's favorite Beltway scribes, David Weigel. I don't particularly object to David, considering he was screwed over by the wingnuts. I just have these conflicted schadenfreude feelings every time this dude sits in front of a camera on MSNBC. We've all been there with the stage fright thing, but David is an extreme example.

Whenever I've seen David on the other side of the red (?) light, he'll start tensing up, his facial muscles contract visibly, and, here's the schadenfreude part: invariably the interviewer, say, Rachel, begins with a really long-winded question, and I'm like, "Rachel, please put this dude out of his misery, otherwise his head might explode ... Let him talk!" (Because, once David starts talking, he relaxes. And so do we.) Not exactly your Nietzschean Superman ... Anyway, here's David's "haha" tweet about protests at the Ryan Georgetown speech. Good guy John Nichols of the Nation (has he been on with Rachel?) replied that the letter signed by 90 prominent faculty members, not to mention the Catholic hierarchy, speaks for itself. David's knee-slapping tweet:

Finally, I absolutely, positively LOVE Catholic sisters! Don't you?

ALEX WAGS HILLARY ROSEN MYSTERY SOLVED!

IN THE MOST EXPLOSIVE 'tease' of her tenure as MSNBC's HOTTEST 'Hostess With The Mostest!' Alex Wags mercilessly tittilated her loyal viewers with the hard break announcement that notorious Dem strategist Hillary Rosen, bane of stay-at-home moms around the world, would be joining her in the next segment. It even got a rise out of the King of Sunday Morning Talk With Whitebread Republican Males, David Gregory.

And then ... NADA. But THE THINKER has obtained an exclusive visual of the scrubbed segment. It seems Ms Rosen objected to the gag order imposed on her by NOW producers, in which her answers were restricted to nods and shakes of the head:

P.S. — We sincerely hope Hillary Rosen's non-appearance, lampooned above, wasn't due to anything serious, such as a sudden illness. This is all just for fun.

Pennsylvania Rising: Early Bellwether Dem Races, RISE OF THE ANGRY WOMEN?!

This NYT story may send Chris's head spinning and/or knock him off the exercise machine if he's not hanging on — as he reads:

WASHINGTON — The defeat of two conservative House Democrats by more liberal opponents in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary illustrates the strong hold the new health care law still has over committed Democratic voters and foreshadows an even more polarized Congress next year in the aftermath of the latest round of redistricting.

Oops. Chris's precious "centrists" have incurred the IRE of his Pennsy paisans, despite his best Beltway efforts to swell the Party ranks with reactionary red (for red state) DINOs responsible for killing the health care law in the Supreme Court. Isn't it ironic, Chris, that all the pompous grief you gave liberals or ("as they call themselves") progressives with your "we-know-best, KILL the public option" riff (against our insistence that the public option was the best policy outcome, under the circumstances) has delivered to the extremists the opening they needed to KILL THE ENTIRE HEALTH CARE LAW IN THE SUPREME COURT?!

SIDEBAR QUESTION: What's the difference between a "centrist" and a "liberal" or the arrogant Beltway pejorative "lefty" used by the supercilious Beltway Media to demean us? (I ask again, Chris: would you call the Kennedy brothers, Truman and FDR "lefties"? If you're still pondering this question, don't bother; time to STFU, already.)

ANSWER: A "centrist" thinks that "TO CAVE" is synonymous with "reach across the aisle" and "compromise" with uncompromising Teabaggers, birthers, and neo-fascists who call us 'communists', while a so-called "lefty" understands that "TO CAVE" is an identifying characteristic of DINO politicians with day-glo yellow stripes down their backs, who refer to themselves in "quiet rooms" as "Mitt's Seamus Pack."

So Chris, In your stupid "we-know-best" Beltway hubris, you, Jon Alter and the Beltway elites, including President Obama who took your advice and didn't listen to us — all of you, are responsible for killing the health care law, as predicted by ... caveat — Chuckles, licking his chops with glee. [Cue in the slow, sarcastic applause.]

 But wait! There's still hope for crushing the right wing! Time to sidestep the Beltway/Idiot Punditocracy and appeal directly to the largest, most enlightened voting bloc in this country: women. For me, this analysis of Patrick Murphy's defeat for Attorney General is, strangely enough, the most interesting part of the Times' story, and also the most promising. Despite the backing of the PA Democratic Establishment, including MSNBC's prescription for insomniacs, former Penn Governor Ed Rendell, Patrick Murphy lost to a woman I'd never heard of. He was a great candidate with all the right positions. Hell, I liked him and so did Rachel. So what happened? Apparently, Patrick is the wrong gender:

"Angry women, still upset over measures like Pennsylvania’s efforts to mandate invasive ultrasounds before abortions. Former Representative Patrick Murphy had the backing of Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia and former Gov. Ed Rendell in his quest to be Pennsylvania’s attorney general. He was expected to dominate Philadelphia and its suburbs, then knock off his Democratic rival, Kathleen Kane, a former Lackawanna County assistant district attorney. But Ms. Kane won with the backing of fed-up women."

OH, MY MY. Yo, Republicans, wingnuts, fascists, patriarchs all: don't lend women your ears or they'll likely be cut off. It's time to cower, quake in your bootsies, and be afraid, BE VERY AFRAID. Brace yourselves against the ATTACK OF THE ANGRY WOMEN. And this time it's no tweety little iPhone game. It's a vast testosterone tsunami — and it's comin' TO GETCHA!

Quotable: Former Nebraska (D - Stands For Good Guy) Senator Bob Kerrey

"If you don't have health care, freedom is a theory; it's not a reality."

~ Senator Bob Kerrey, the "Happy Warrior," is vying to reclaim his Nebraska U.S. Senate seat, coming out of retirement to buck scumbags like Karl Rove and the Koch brothers, and all the smears their unlimited, filthy, Supreme Court bag money can dump on him. Why? Because he's a patriot, and he wants to save our country from the fascist Republican devils and their ratbastard acolytes. My words, but it's the truth.

Senator Kerrey served as a Navy Seal in Vietnam. He lost the lower part of one leg in combat and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Senator Kerrey had this to say of "government" healthcare, the VA: "They saved my life."

If The Gong Don't Work, Massage 'EL LOCO DEE-LAN' Ego: "Dylan Ratigan For President"...

YIKES! BUT OUR BRILLIANT ALEX WAGS got Martin Bashir's reclamation project grinning from ear to ear, having achieved our objective with her gift for wit. I was going, whenever he opens his mouth: 'get this walking exemplar of sophistry to STFU, already!' (Alex, incidentally, your "and on the fifth day, he rested" rejoinder was excellent. Good intra-Catholic joke, duly noted.) Only Ratigan gets Martin to drop his jaw with that priceless dumbfounded look, rendered temporarily speechless. I totally understand, Martin.

But the "Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn" of cable broadcasting? Hardly. Please, Alex — it's more like James Bond versus Ernst Stavro Blofeld. And one more thing, Blofeld, you pompous, IGNORANT ass. Here are the brief facts, and we can go into all the detail you're too scared to indulge in: The greatest expansion of our middle class, prosperity for all citizens, educational opportunities, scientific innovations, stock market growth, lifting people out of poverty, health care and a dignified retirement for our seniors has been achieved under LIBERAL, PROGRESSIVE government! So don't give us your sophistic false equivalence riff on the "failure" of liberal government.

Ratigan, you're a fucking LIAR and a SOPHIST of the worst kind. And your promotion of Teabagger nihilism leading up to the 2010 midterms, halting the President's capacity to carry out his program, then hypocritically lambasting him for being so much talk and no action (a clever attack line because we know you loathe him), is completely unforgivable. You're a disgrace, Dylan, a fool who obviously knows little about government — except that you don't like it — and even less about history. In fact, you're a perfect example of our present anti-government Republican/Libertarian driven crisis in education. Tragically so. For us, not you. Because your anarchic ignorance on matters affecting the body politic has kept us in the Fox-wingnut-Libertarian lurch. You've never gotten your screwed-up stealth Libertarian agenda past me, pal. Unfortunately, there are too many on my side, who still don't get it, suffering from excessive grasp-at-straws niceness toward those of your ilk. Congratulations, Dylan, for actively participating in the destruction of our country.

P.S. — Amy Goodman's Due Diligence On Gulf Oil Spill

WE STILL LOVE ALEX, but there's politics and then there's policy. Environmental policy, in particular, has been savaged by the Republicans, with President Obama's collaboration. I've never seen it this bad, with the public so apathetic about preserving our environment and ensuring that our food, air, and water supply is safe. Maybe it's easy to pretend horrific violence wasn't done to the Gulf, and  penitently eat our serving of poisoned seafood. But the public's torpid response has only emboldened the high stakes economic interests at play here. This is one working government-business partnership pact with the Devil.

Ken Feinberg, Mary Landrieu, BP and the EPA are confident they can sandbag the public with hollow and dangerous assertions of "safe" seafood. And they're right. The AP report that the Pentagon Commissary gave a boost to the Gulf seafood industry by purchasing it in bulk for distribution to East Coast military bases shows a reckless disregard for the health and safety of our troops. And it also shows that the government is neither an impartial nor independent monitor of seafood safety. Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, along with Al Jazeera and nonprofits like ProPublica, represent the dwindling sources of truly independent media taking a hard look at seafood safety claims and asking the tough questions. It's time MSNBC, and its cohorts, got on board — if they're willing or able.

Daily Double Poison: Feinberg And Landrieu LIE On Alex And Andrea

FUNNY ME, BUT I THOUGHT the production and research staffs on NOW and Andrea Mitchell Reports were there for a purpose: to research and produce. Unless they're too busy navel-gazing, wondering whether to get that body piercing, to activate their widdle index fingers and go click, click, click. It's not hard, Alex. I even posted the links for your convenience, well in advance of your interview with "Ken" Feinberg, former administrator of the BP compensation fund. (Love the first-name chumminess with a dude who is essentially representing interests — BP and our government's — directly in conflict with the public's.)

Catherine Crier to Ken Feinberg, or what happens when a lawyer queries another lawyer: You get a lot of circuitous CYA bullshit before actually getting to the heart of the matter. Crier set the premise well — "fish populations are beginning to show very disturbing mutations as well as diminution of populations, long term chemical organic activity" — but, inexplicably asked the wrong question: "is that a compensation pool as well?" The "long term chemical organic activity" [Attention Alex: clickee the thingee-linkee above] is not about a separate compensation pool (that's ancillary), rather, it should be about People FIRST, fish SECOND.

The questions most concerning to people are, FIRST, is Gulf seafood safe to consume, and only then, how will the fish populations be impacted? In short, Catherine's knee-jerk "professional courtesy" approach was to give Feinberg plenty of wiggle room. He needed it. After a rambling, lawyerly CYA reply, Feinberg finally came around to his BIG LIE: "There is absolutely no current evidence that the food is bad, that it’s not safe." A Straight-Up LIE.

But he buried this declarative LIE in a maze of qualifiers: "... there's a fine line here" [trans: don't take my word for it], "... other allegations" [trans: the FDA relaxed its allowable levels of concern (LOCs) of "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) ... (see clickee/thingee/linkee, Alex), which can accumulate in seafood, are known carcinogens and developmental toxicants"— a nice seafood chemical cocktail which "bio-accumulates" in our tissues, meaning they're there forever, resulting, at a minimum, in increased risk to pregnant women],... we’re ever vigilant, we’re watching the seafood, we’re watching gulf ecosystems" [trans: the "monitoring" agencies have colluded with BP and industry interests to cook the LOC books, deeming the risk of ingesting tainted seafood acceptably high, considering Gulf seafood represents 40% of America's total consumption, an unacceptable economic risk compared to the risk to people's health, which is always secondary], don't worry be happy, "... that's a long term monitoring initiative to keep our eyes on the Gulf going forward." [Trans: Bullshit.]

On the other side of NOW Andrea Mitchell completed the Daily Double coverup by interviewing long-time bought oil and gas industry hack, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Andrea's concession to the public interest was to mention in passing the AP story, which covered the same ground as Al Jazeera's report, without the same level of detail. Here's Landrieu literally selling POISON to Andrea's viewers and LYING even more blatantly than Feinberg: " All the studies show that Gulf seafood is safe to eat. I mean, we are eating it in Louisiana. We're frying it and eating it as fast as we can. Our oysters are good, our shrimp are good and safe according to every test done." [OMG! Excuse me while I puke, literally, thinking about eyeless shrimp, fish with gross lesions and growths, and chemicals that can be viewed under one's skin with UV light!] "But there's still some science that we need to know about how the dispersants worked. What are the long-term effects."

[Well, gee Senator. That's good to know. Years from now, when people start developing cancers of mysterious origin, and children are born with developmental problems, our right wing court injustice corporate protection system will make all the lawsuits go away; just as they did with the atomic veterans claims.] Oh, by the way, here's that study that Senator Landrieu LIED about, claiming it does not exist. (Clickee-thingee, Alex?) A summary of its findings, from the Abstract:

Background: The BP oil spill of 2010 resulted in contamination of one of the most productive fisheries in the United States by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs, which can accumulate in seafood, are known carcinogens and developmental toxicants. In response to the oil spill, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) developed risk criteria and established thresholds for allowable levels [levels of concern (LOCs)] of PAH contaminants in Gulf Coast seafood.

Objectives: We evaluated the degree to which the FDA’s risk criteria adequately protect vulnerable Gulf Coast populations from cancer risk associated with PAHs in seafood.

Discussion: The FDA LOCs significantly underestimate risk from seafood contaminants among sensitive Gulf Coast populations by failing to a) account for the increased vulnerability of the developing fetus and child; b) use appropriate seafood consumption rates; c) include all relevant health end points; and d) incorporate health-protective estimates of exposure duration and acceptable risk. For benzo[a]pyrene and naphthalene, revised LOCs are between two and four orders of magnitude below the level set by the FDA. Comparison of measured levels of PAHs in Gulf seafood with the revised LOCs revealed that up to 53% of Gulf shrimp samples were above LOCs for pregnant women who are high-end seafood consumers.

Conclusions: FDA risk assessment methods should be updated to better reflect current risk assessment practices and to protect vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and children.

Too bad Alex and Andrea weren't prepared to ask more pertinent and incisive questions about the safety of Gulf seafood so that we, as consumers, could make informed decisions. I hate to break it to you, Alex and no-excuses Andrea, but it's your jobs, you know. "Mary Landrieu, on the case." Nice ass-kissing touch, Andrea.

THE THINKER BREAKS HIS MAIDEN AT THE BIG A!

HIS THIRD CAREER race was the charm. THE THINKER, by Tale of The Cat, out of Sire of Sires Storm Cat, and Valdivia on the Dam side, out of Pleasant Colony, is bred to the Ts! This New York bred racehorse is headed for the Stakes divisions as a high-class runner. Expect nothing less from our namesake! Watch him easily beat top-quality Maiden Special Weights company:

Quotable: Is There Such A Thing As An Adorable Wingnut?

YES! S.E. CUPP ON THE MARTIN BASHIR SHOW. Here's S.E. in one of her cute blushing moments, standing up for MORE! MUCHO MACHO MEN in the Secret Service:

“The idea that women are somehow above this (ahem, Secret Service extra-curricular activity) kind of stuff, I can prattle off a long list of women who have fallen prey to immoral behavior — we are not above it, trust me!”

MARTIN: “S.E. thank you, thank you for being so honest …”

S.E.: [Blushing … she blushes easily, having walked right into the notorious BASHIR BUZZSAW, credited with having unhinged the wicked wench, Dana LASH.]

Aw, Martin … save it for the wench. S.E. is much too adorable; I really think she’s redeemable. And she’s a good sport to take the gentle teasing of a liberal panel; S.E. knows she’s got issues, and is trying hard to work through them. It’s the first step to recovery! Just ask your buddy, Dylan.

Music Break: No, It's Not The Sexy Liberal Show ...

BUT THAT SEXY raven-haired beauty sure looks like Stephanie Miller's sultry twin sister. It's smooth Bossa Nova from the great Marcos Valle; and Stephanie's look-alike is the lovely Patricia Alvi.

Republicans/Wingnuts Are MENTALLY ILL — Seriously.

THIS IS NOTHING NEW.  There are academic and scientific studies out there which confirm what most of us normal folks who have to deal with these vermin, because we're into politics, know instinctively.  For example: "A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity." As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction. All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality." Another study found that "self-proclaimed right-wingers had a more pronounced amydgala — a primitive part of the brain associated with emotion"— like fear.

In short, tell me something I didn't know. Right? But there's a serious aspect to this, too. The Republican refusal to govern responsibly — i.e., in the public interest — isn't rooted solely in politics, as the Idiot Punditocracy claims; it's a mental illness. History is filled with examples of psychotic political leaders and entire nations which succumbed to their extremism. Always with the same result: severe trauma to the body-politic. And while I'm as loathe to make generalizations about Republicans and wingnuts as the corporate right Beltway Media is about liberals and progressives — the Idiot Punditocracy LOVES to pontificate about the "two extremes," as if there is anything on the left approximating these sickos on the extremist right. That is, until we called them on it and laid out the evidence of 100 years of steady state progressivism versus the increasing polarization of the extremist right.

Doesn't matter. With a few notable exceptions, the Beltway Media/Idiot Punditocracy will NEVER learn. They're part of the problem; worse, an adjunct of the right wing propaganda machine. "Pushback" in their circles, is timid Soledad O'Brien of CNN apologetically quizzing the neo-fascist sicko Allen West over his insane charge that there are "between 78 to 81" card-carrying "communists" in the "Democrat Party." Turns out this 21st century wannabe Joe McCarthy, an ignorant, history-challenged demagogue was lobbing "red scare" smear grenades at the House Progressive Caucus. Hasn't this cretin violated enough rules of decorum to be brought up before the House Ethics Committee?

Bill-O The Clown, a Chris Matthews favorite, charged respected liberal economist and former Labor Secretary under President Clinton, Bob Reich, with being "a communist" who "secretly adores Karl Marx." The repulsive xenophobic wench Dana Loesch, a protected species in Soledad's channel, pulled the "foreigner" canard from her dropped "trou" to screech as how Martin Bashir should "go back where he came from"— then, in typical wingnut whine, bitch that only the 53 seconds of her attack on Martin was lifted from her mind-numbing multiple hour rant-posing-as-radio-program.

Yo, Fräulein LASH, a minute or less of your ignorant rants is just about the tolerable limit for people lacking diseased wingnut brains. Apparently, the vulgar wench objects to Martin's British accent but has no problem with the Brit clown on Fox waging his privileged "foreigner class" warfare on poor people. This is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. "Exhibit  A" is the scumbag (I'm trying to be "civil" here) who was hired as Mitt Romney's "communications" director. Watch, as Rachel rips this pustulent scab open:

Here's the thing. If the implication is Rachel looks boyish, someone forgot to tell the imbecile Grenell that Justin Bieber kind of looks like a girl — no offense, but he's much too "pretty." Therefore, for Romney's spokesman to suggest Rachel is a Bieber "dead ringer" is not only stupid but an unsolicited glimpse into the asshole's tortured soul. Is Grenell projecting homo-erotic fantasies toward Justin Bieber? Does he fancy boys? Just saying.

To understand just how utterly inappropriate and sick these people are, imagine this: What in the world would possess anyone to consider it "humorous" and "tongue-in-cheek" to tweet the following about our First Lady: "did you notice that while Michelle Obama is working out on the BiggestLoser she is sweating on the East Room's Carpet. Just saying ..."

I ask you: what would your reaction be, in a social face to face context, to such a despicable expression of racism, sexism, and just plain meanness? Exactly. This isn't said in a vacuum. This Grenell creep exists in an environment in which bigoted, inappropriate language is acceptable discourse. I've often written here of the nasty shit that passes for "humor" among wingnuts. It is neither "humorous" nor "tongue-in-cheek" but inappropriate, cringe-inducing "hot garbage" to normal people. There is something universal about good humor, which transcends culture and context, and which unites us. The so-called "humor" of wingnuts and "conservatives" is the inverse of that — hateful, nasty bigotry meant to demean people and accentuate the "other."

One dead giveaway between regular, normal folks who may have said something inappropriate, and the constant barrage of "humorous" hate language from these right wing sickos, is the tenor of the expressed apology. A normal person's apology is genuine, heartfelt and contrite. A wingnut's apology (see Limbaugh, Grenell et al) is frequently an insincere qualifier, "to those I have offended ..." As if the problem is with the people who took offense. Therein lies the mental illness. Normal people, indeed most of us, have an internal trigger that keeps us from saying and doing highly inappropriate things. It's called a conscience.

For reasons that are self-evident in a country with such a large (though, thankfully not a majority) racist population, President Obama must internalize the vicious, incessant attacks on him and his wife. One has to respect their strength of character, to be able to take it. For the President, it's expected, it goes with the Big League political territory. But Michelle, ever so gracious, never showing her hurt, is even more admirable for taking it with such classy equanimity. No wonder she enjoys such high approval ratings among decent Americans — still a majority. Although I think, sometimes President Obama must wish he could channel Harry Truman to deal with the guttersnipes who attack his family. When a music "critic" dissed the singing of Truman's daughter, President Truman fired off this handwritten letter to the offender:

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

Dec. 6. 1950

Mr. Hume:-

I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.”

It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.

Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!

Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.

H.S.T.